Chapter 6: Happy Holidays

LESLIE CAUGHT ME just after our tribal class Tuesday afternoon.

“We need to talk!” she said. Wow! Sounded like a girlfriend breakup intro, only Leslie wasn’t my girlfriend.

“I’ve got to run for the train. It’s my night to cook. Can we talk on the way to the studio tomorrow?” I said.

“Yessss. I want to see the pictures,” she hissed.

I nodded. I assumed she meant the pictures of Rita, since Rita was a member of the Whore Corps. I was really running to the studio before the train to pick up the transparencies. I’d look at them at home.

I was on dinner duty, but I’d prepared everything the night before and all I had to do was heat the oven and shove it in. When Ronda and Patricia got home—and I’d spent a satisfactory amount of time dancing with Toni—I showed them the transparencies. They’d already seen the portrait I’d developed and printed Saturday before I came home.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Good enough for the gallery?”

“I’ll have to see it as a print,” Ronda said, “but it looks good to me.”

“I like the sense of whimsy,” Patricia said. “I mean, lying there on the couch dangling her panties from her fingers while she winks at you? That’s just precious!”

“Well, I’ll get a copy printed tomorrow and have it here when Anna gets home Thursday. If she approves, we’ll go talk to Mr. Zefford after my shoot on Friday,” I said. “I hired her, by the way.”

“Um ... To do what?” Ronda asked. “I mean, you said she didn’t go all the way.”

“No, silly. In fact, I think she entirely forgot I had a cock,” I said. Anna had been the beneficiary of that oversight Saturday night. We didn’t sleep much. “I hired her to replace Theresa as an assistant in the studio.”

“Is there enough work?”

“I’m amazed. Anna’s promotional plan has really worked and I’ve got four a weekend scheduled for the next four weeks. Plus, the props closet is a mess. We didn’t really do a very good job of organizing things when we got back from Canada, and Leanne has cut back her time with me, too. Cassie pretty much works full-time for Levi and is only shopping for new stuff. I’d say I might need another assistant if this keeps up. Besides, the girl’s broke.”

“Ah. That’s the real reason. Beautiful girl in need. Nate to the rescue,” Patricia giggled.

I put the casserole on the table and we dished up plates of Almost Dinner. It was a dish I learned to love growing up poor in South Chicago. Cream of mushroom soup, vegetable soup, tomato soup, ground beef, noodles and onion. Seasoned with soy sauce. Crumble potato chips on top. With just the four of us and one being a toddler, it made enough for two meals.

“Am I really bad?” I asked. “I mean, yeah, it was sexy but I try not to be led around by my dick all the time. And she was enthusiastic about the job. And the modeling. I think I might use her to model again.”

“Honey, calm down,” Ronda said, patting my hand.

“Cahm down!” Toni giggled. I really needed to remember to think about what was appropriate dinner conversation with a little girl at the table. Like Mom always said, ‘Little pitchers have big ears.’ I never did figure out what pitchers had to do with ears, but I got the meaning.

“Yeah. We can talk about it later,” I said. “How were your classes today?”

From there the conversation went to how our day went and Toni got to contribute about what she did in daycare.

Leslie was waiting outside the door when I walked out of Makeup Techniques class Wednesday. We waited for Leanne to catch up, then grabbed a sandwich in the cafeteria and headed for the studio for our study group.

“Wait until you see the new design!” Leanne said. “And I have a model who is willing to perform!”

“I think you need to wait in line,” I said. “Leslie is waiting to ream my ass over something.”

“Are you kidding?” Leslie asked. “I wanted to congratulate you for landing the most in-demand fashion maven in the department. I’m just hoping that means, you’ll share with me. Can I come to your studio to photograph her with you?”

“Um ... You mean Rita? You recommended she model for me. You could have warned me,” I said.

“I didn’t know she was taking the plunge. I told her she’d have to get naked. I was sure that would chase her away.”

“Wait till you see the photo,” I said. “The girl is scrumptious.”

“Do you have the print already?”

“No, just the transparency. I was hoping to get a print pulled after we meet today.”

“Do it first!” Leanne said. “I’ll come into the darkroom with you and ... um ... help fill the time.”

“No, me!” Leslie said.

“I haven’t had time in the darkroom with Nate, ever,” Carrie complained. “I wanna!”

“You should complain,” Dora said. “Why don’t we all go in the darkroom with Nate? That would be fun.”

“Um ... A little crowded and you know how I feel about some things, Dora.”

“In the dark, how are you going to know who’s who unless you start groping pussies?”

“It’s not like I can’t see under red light,” I said.

“We can’t leave poor Dora out here all alone,” Carrie said. “She should at least be able to come in and live vicariously through the rest of us.”

“All right,” I finally agreed. “But it’s going to be crowded and hot. I’m just warning you.”

We all filed into the darkroom and I closed the door, setting up the Cibachrome chemicals and hoping we didn’t all suffocate.

“Last chance to go out before I turn out the light.”

Nobody moved, so I hit the switch. In the light, I had put the transparency in a carrier to slide into the enlarger and focused everything for the size enlargement I wanted. I had the paper, still in the box, next to the enlarger and ready to slide into place on the easel. I anticipated that this would ultimately require a few prints before I arrived at a perfect one, but I knew the first one would be good, regardless.

Once the light was out, I slid the paper out of the box onto the easel, made sure it was aligned, and turned on the enlarger. This was the first light in the room. I’d lied about being able to see under the red light. I couldn’t use red light with Cibachrome. It would print. I could hear Leslie telling our team about the process and how many steps there were. When I judged I had the right initial exposure, I turned off the enlarger and very carefully slid the print into the developer bath, which was basically the same as the developer I use for black and white.

The paper is slightly less fragile than the uncoated paper I use for archival black and white prints, but it was still a delicate process. While the print was in the developer, I felt hands on my back. I turned and was immediately pulled into a kiss by a nearly naked girl. She was topless, anyway. She worked on the buttons on my shirt while we kissed. I helped myself to a handful of her bare breasts.

My timer rang and I had to take the print out of the developer and rinse it. This took a minute and then I slipped the print into the bleach tank. Cibachrome is a dye destruction process. The bleach destroys the silver that hasn’t been exposed to the color for its layer. There were ten layers of light sensitive silver halide that were exposed on the enlarger.

I no more than had the paper in the bleach when another set of arms wrapped around me and another pair of bare breasts were pressed against my chest and into my welcoming hands. My timer rang and I moved the print from the bleach to the fixer.

Another girl pressed her boobs against me and for four minutes, I got lost in the sensation of a great kiss and beautiful breasts in my hands and against my chest. The timer rang and I moved the print to a rinsing screen. Leslie took it from me to put under gently running water for the final rinse.

I knew it was coming, but it was dark and I decided to close my eyes and just go with it. The lips were soft and welcoming. The breasts were just incredible.

“Why does your top half have to be so damned exquisite?” I breathed as I pushed Dora away from me. Damn those tits were nice!

I turned and flipped the light switch as Leslie gently squeegeed the print and handed it to me.

“Let’s go take a look,” I said, trying not to fixate on the four pairs of bare breasts in the darkroom. I went out of the room and took the print to the table where I started drying it with a hair dryer. The girls had all retrieved their tops before they came out of the darkroom.

The print was good. I could see areas where I’d do some additional work on a final print, but this was definitely good enough to hang in the gallery. For that matter, it could be the copy I gave Rita and she would love it.

Carrie was cuddled up to me as tightly as she could get and had a hand on my chest the whole time we were critiquing the print.

“Hey, what’s up?” I asked. “You’re awfully cuddly.”

“You said my top half was exquisite,” she sighed. “Do you want to examine the bottom half, too?”

“I said...” What? If I’d been kissing Carrie when I thought I was kissing Dora, that meant one of the others I’d kissed had been Dora and I didn’t know the difference! Fuck!

“I think we should do some studying, since that’s what we’re here for,” I said.

Ronda and Patricia loved the print, but the real test was when Anna got home Thursday night. She managed the relationship with Hal Zefford. She would surely know best if this photo would fly with him.

“This wouldn’t be the one I send over to him,” I said. “I need to test some other settings and this area should be dodged a little more, it got too dark. It will take a couple of tests.”

“Yes,” she said. “If Hal said he’d accept a color print, this is exactly up his alley. And this is the girl you had last Saturday?”

“Yes. You know, I hired her to work as an assistant and I’ll probably have her model again. Leslie says I landed the top fashion maven in the department and she wants to do joint photoshoots of her.”

“Is she working tomorrow?”

“Leanne has the morning shift and Rita has the afternoon client. She’ll work all day on Saturday.”

“I need to come over and meet her,” Anna said.

“Isn’t it okay?” I asked, feeling a little affronted that she felt she needed to approve my hiring choice.

“It’s fine. I just want to thank her for the spectacular night I had Saturday. Anytime she can inspire sex like that, she’s welcome to!”

Over the next five weeks, I had fifteen new clients on Fridays and Saturdays. Apparently, photographs had become an in thing for girls to give for Christmas. And from what they said, they weren’t just giving them to parents. They were going to boyfriends, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and best friends from high school.

Most of the sessions were portrait and Attic Allure sessions that stayed clothed—or at least mostly so. I had a couple of girls who wanted what they referred to as boudoir photos. I’d heard the term before and even used it on occasion, but suddenly Attic Allure became known as a place where young women could safely have a boudoir photo taken.

Carrie had written an essay about the correlation of boudoir photography and feminism, including photos of herself and of Leva Harmon. Leslie and Leanne both gave her permission to include their photos. The women who came to me for photos during October and early November were not just beautiful models. I had a couple of kind of fat girls who came and were bolder in what they wanted than some of the classically pretty girls ever would be. I did my best to take alluring photos of each woman, no matter what I had to work with.

And my eyes were opened, as well.

I started to see all women as beautiful. I’d already made that connection in high school and remembered photographing Mary Simpson, for example, a girl in my class who was overweight and left our session with a new feeling of beauty and self worth. She’d started dating Rod McVey soon after that and I’d heard they were engaged. Then there was Brenda Bell, a girl in the class of ‘69 with a rather homely face but a killer body. She could curl up like she had scarcely a bone in her body, and when I gave her a pair of cat ears, she just came alive.

I’d definitely spent too much time photographing Las Vegas showgirls, Hollywood movie stars, and Stratford theatre actresses. These new girls were just as beautiful, I realized, even if in a different way. I’d once chided Amy about her true beauty not being in her looks but in what was inside. It was high time I figured that out for myself, too.

Of course, that didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate a truly beautiful woman as well. On Saturday the fourteenth of November, I had the best. I spent the entire day in the studio with Patricia, celebrating her twenty-first birthday. It wasn’t for three more days, but I still had a bottle of chilled champagne in the studio and had lunch delivered for us.

I took all black and white photos of her and returned to the mode of photography I truly loved. We experimented with different props from the closet, costumes, backdrops and drapery. A lot of our experiments would help me with the kind of photography that was being requested more often. I experimented with different filters and lighting. And we took frequent breaks to go to the darkroom together and develop and print a picture. And make love. I was so in love with this incredibly beautiful woman and mother of my goddaughter.

“I so wish I could take you to Australia with me,” I sighed. “You are such an inspiration.”

“Think about it, though,” she said. “How many people will be in your class? And you’d want to share me with all of them? Posing me naked? Touching me?”

“Oh, God no! You know I wouldn’t want that.”

“Did you talk to Adrienne?”

“Yes, but we had a conference call in Professor Hyatt’s office with Josh Logan a couple of weeks ago. It was the middle of the night for him, but he was happy to give me a briefing. He suggested that bringing anyone with me would tend to inhibit the experience he was planning.”

“Just with you? I mean and the professor. Are you the only one going?” she asked.

“I’m the only one from Columbia. I didn’t realize it was kind of a competition and he only accepted four applicants for the session. We come from four different programs around the world!”

“I am so proud of you, Nate. You are really getting to be internationally known. You have to arrange to see Adrienne over the Christmas break, though.”

“I’m scheduled to go the week after Christmas. It means I’ll be there over New Year’s Eve, but that was the only time I could arrange. Then I’ll be back for, like, three days before I leave for Australia. I feel like I’m going to be missing my family a lot,” I said.

I pulled my naked girlfriend into my arms and we made love on the bed we’d been using for photos. So much for no sex in the studio.

I think one of the things that hold families together is traditions. Uncle Nate was often at Mom’s for holidays or vice versa. Anna’s family went to midnight Christmas Eve candlelight services at their church. Patricia’s family—who weren’t really religious at all—had an advent calendar with a little door and a chocolate that was opened for each day of December. Ronda’s family often went skiing over the holidays.

Maybe it was selfish of us, but we decided in a family meeting of Ronda, Patricia, Anna, and me, to make this a year of establishing our own family traditions. We were starting by having our own Thanksgiving and not going back to Tenbrook for the break.

We each spent a long time on the phone explaining our decision to our parents. I guess in traditional families, a lot of couples decide if they are spending Thanksgiving with her parents and Christmas with his, or the other way around. With our family, we’d been trying to make the rounds of all four or five families on every holiday. It was really stressful and once we’d even taken both cars in order to make things work.

And all our families had come to Stratford the past summer, which was absolute chaos trying to have dinners and shows and time with the grandbaby and one-on-one conversations with parents and sibs and still get work done in the store and the studio. We needed to set a boundary and establish our own family tradition. Just having made the decision relieved a lot of stress we were feeling over classes and exams and getting our various families taken care of.

That meant we had to decide what our family tradition would be.

Patricia suggested that we have a family photo at Thanksgiving that we could send to all our families for Christmas. I thought that was a little self-indulgent because I always seemed to give my family photographs, but the girls all thought it was a good idea, so we put that on our list of things we wanted to do.

Then there was the matter of a Christmas tree and decorating. Wow! Did we even have any decorations? Anna, Patricia, and Toni drove back to Tenbrook the weekend before Thanksgiving ‘to raid the family decorations.’ Mom promised to have a box of decorations for us, as did Dr. and Mrs. May. The reality of the situation was that it helped all the families feel less left out because they all got to see Toni and spend a little while with her. Even Ronda’s rather staid doctor father loved to get down on the floor and play with Toni for a while.

We decided we would get a Christmas tree on Thanksgiving weekend and decorate the apartment for the holidays. There would be no studio hours over that weekend.

And that brought us to Thanksgiving Dinner. I had visions of my father getting up at four in the morning to get a twenty-five-pound turkey stuffed and in the oven. We ate turkey most of the way to Christmas and then he turned around and did the same thing with a huge ham. Turkey was ingrained in all our psyches, but we decided a small bird of maybe eight pounds would be more than adequate for our five-person family.

While they were in Tenbrook, Anna and Patricia collected recipes from all the families. We could just about make our own cookbook. We divided up the responsibilities for Thanksgiving dinner and each had a dish we were going to prepare. I was in charge of the turkey and dressing. Patricia had a recipe for mashed potatoes and cabbage that she promised was delicious, no matter how it sounded to say it. Anna was preparing vegetables, but hadn’t decided exactly what yet. She also volunteered to make gravy after the turkey drippings could be separated. And Ronda was the designated pie baker. Fortunately, all we had to do with the cranberry sauce was open the can.